Writing & Design for Games & Narratives

A Deleted Scene from Doctor Who

INT. DALEK SPACE-DUNGEON
The Doctor and Rose dash out of the TARDIS in a panic and survey the smashed Dalek control consoles. Sparks are flying everywhere, dying quietly on the polished-smooth floor of the alien fortress. CAPTAIN JACK lays sprawled, TEMPORARILY DEAD, on the floor, surrounded by bits of exploded Dalek. Rose stares, agape, at a computer monitor, but what she sees isn’t visible to us.

ROSE
That’s impossible.

The Doctor goes very calm, both serene and sad. He looks far away, at nothing. His hair defies reason.

DOCTOR WHO
That’s it. We’re done.

ROSE
No!

DOCTOR WHO
There’s nothing more we can do.

ROSE
Don’t give up!

DOCTOR WHO
The influx of time matter is just too strong. The strongest kind of Zed energy in this or any universe. There isn’t anything that can combat it. Nothing at all.

ROSE
So we’re dead?

DOCTOR WHO
Not just dead. We’ll be utterly erased from the cosmos, as if we never existed. Forever. We’ll be forgotten, and never imagined, ever. The IDEA of us will be destroyed. Forever.

ROSE
But… can’t we—

DOCTOR WHO
“Can’t?!” Yes! Brilliant, Rose! We can’t combat it, but we can turn it against itself with a massive contrary field of hyper-state anti-zed super-matter! The Dalek wave undoes everything, and our counter wave-form asserts the undeniable possibility matrix of hope itself, so the Dalek wave makes nothingness out of itself! It’ll be destroyed, down to the very idea, so that no one will ever think of it again!

ROSE
Brilliant!

DOCTOR WHO
Yes, brilliant! Well, it would’ve been more brilliant if we’d thought of it ten minutes ago… But nevermind that! To incite the quantifying field we need everyone on Earth to hope at once, at the same time, every living soul, or we’re all doomed!

ROSE
How do we do that?

DOCTOR WHO
(ponders)
Kittens. LOL CATS! Everyone must receive a sweetly hilarious, forwarded image at the SAME MOMENT! They’ll each be delighted at the simple idiocy of a global network harnessed for such moronic joy, but they’ll also tap into the simple, timeless, animal delight of seeing an adorable kitteh! It’ll send ironic hope into the future while echoing ancient feelings of instinctive shucks, blasting our hope frequency across all time and space!

ROSE
Right, then.
(pumps the mechanism on her space-gun)
Let’s save the universe.